PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – It wasn’t until the end of his press conference that J.J. Spaun finally saw a replay of his ill-fated shot that doomed his longshot bid to win this Players Championship. He paused his answer to fix his eyes on one of the TVs in the back of the media center.
“Can I just watch it?” he asked. “I haven’t seen it.”
“Look how high it is!”
“It’s just floating!”
A half hour later, he was still in disbelief.
The Players had gone an extra day, to a three-hole aggregate playoff between two players who might be only a year apart in age but whose careers represented a wider gulf: Spaun, 34, who last summer thought his playing days were coming to an end, and the 35-year-old McIlroy, whose outstanding goals would cement him as one of the game’s all-time greats.
The 9 a.m. restart presented a challenge unlike any the players had faced all week. The warm, steamy weather was gone, replaced by bitter cold and ferocious gusts that opened eyes, reddened faces and introduced luck. The wind howled out of a different direction than just 12 hours earlier, rendering any prior knowledge useless. And the nerves? They were the highest they’d been all week, with thousands of fans returning for a made-for-TV spectacle with actual stakes.
Spaun arrived on the 16th tee feeling as though he’d finally reached the end of his never-ending week. He hadn’t slept well the previous two nights, when he held a share of the lead at golf’s fifth major, but warming up he didn’t feel uncomfortable or anxious or stressed. For the past few years, as his career plateaued, he has started to feel the pull of home – of feeling content with his achievements and his young family, of feeling guilty after spending just a single week with them this year. This week, he’d already delayed three flights home, looking and sounding like a man in need of a comforting hug.
But that was for later Monday. Spaun was on the brink of a career-altering moment. Never a world-beater as a junior, a former walk-on in college, he has never viewed himself as anything more than a serviceable pro. Sure, he won in San Antonio in 2022, but there’s been plenty of one-hit wonders throughout the long history of the Tour. Last year, when he was well outside the top-125 cutoff with only a few events remaining, Spaun felt at peace with what he’d accomplished. Eight years on Tour. That one win. Lifelong friendships formed. About $12 million in the bank.
“I didn’t know what my ceiling was,” he said. “I still guess I don’t know what it is.”
Spaun had already learned plenty about himself this week. A few years ago, he took the 54-hole lead in the playoff opener in Memphis, by far the biggest spot of his career to that point. He should have been fortified by his breakthrough victory just four months earlier, but he admitted now that he wasn’t prepared. He shot 78 in that final round, tumbling all the way outside the top 40, and felt a sting of disappointment he never had experienced before.
“I had a lot of scar tissue from that,” he said. “I didn’t want to have that feeling of, not just defeat, but, like, crawling-into-a-hole-and-dying kind of feeling because it was so embarrassing. I was just afraid to feel embarrassed again.”
And so, over the past few years, Spaun found himself shying away from the moment and the spotlight and the pressure. Not consciously, of course, but rather something deeper, letting the anxiety overcome him, allowing mistakes to compound and being satisfied with performances that were often good but not quite good enough.
A mini-breakthrough came earlier this year at Sony, where he hung tough on the back nine and wound up a shot shy of the playoff. And it showed up again Sunday at The Players, where he dropped three shots behind on the back nine but rallied by playing his last five holes in 2 under, in the biggest pressure cooker of his life, to crash the playoff with McIlroy.
Spaun: Was committed to shot on 17, hit ‘too good’
After coming up short in The Players playoff vs. Rory McIlroy, J.J. Spaun explains what went wrong on a 17th hole tee shot he felt committed to, as well as the disappointment in coming up short.
“I was like, OK, don’t be afraid of the moment. Enjoy it,” he said. “This is what every great athlete talks about being in the moment and having the opportunity to win and wanting the ball. Well, I want the ball. Even though I didn’t win, I took a lot from that.”
McIlroy arrived on the 16th tee in a similar frame of mind. He had won 42 times around the globe, and yet he awoke at 3 a.m. Monday and couldn’t fall back asleep, his mind racing at the possibilities of the day. So he arrived at TPC Sawgrass at 6:15 and dove into the habit of his routine, going through a full workout and warmup, even though he’d likely need to hit just five full shots in the playoff.
Of course, given his stature in the game, McIlroy’s scar tissue is more apparent than Spaun’s. His failings have come on the biggest stages. Pick your favorite major disappointment in recent memory: the 2022 Open, when he was leapfrogged by Cam Smith at the Home of Golf; the 2023 U.S. Open, where he was clipped by Wyndham Clark; the 2024 U.S. Open, where he was undone by two late miscues; or his early-round flameouts at the last three Masters. Near-misses at last year’s BMW PGA and Irish Open also led him to label himself as golf’s nearly man.
McIlroy nearly added another lowlight to the list late Sunday, when he coughed up a three-shot lead with six holes to play, blowing a wild drive into the trees, getting fooled by two reads in the near-darkness and failing to capitalize with two short irons.
“When I put myself in that position,” he said, “I expect myself to win.”
Now, his title chances were down to just three holes, to a gutsy opponent, to a watery finishing stretch and unpredictable winds.
“I’m going out there today and I’m expected to win,” he said. “That brings its own pressure in some way.”
Standing over the tee shot, shuffling his feet and realigning his shoulders, McIlroy felt more nerves than he had in ages. His stomach churning. His legs shaky. His heart racing.
“So that will stay with me,” he said, “feeling like that and being able to hit the golf shots that I needed.”
Rory on set: Must ‘be willing to get heart broken’
Rory McIlroy joins the set of Live From The Players, sharing how vulnerability has shaped his career in the last few years, walking through the weekend at TPC Sawgrass, reflecting on his nerves and more.
With a helping, right-to-left wind, McIlroy unloaded a 336-yarder over the corner of the dogleg that left him just a pitching wedge into the green. His two-putt from 30 feet gave him a quick one-shot advantage – and also the honor on the tee of the par-3 17th.
An hour earlier, he’d replicated that shot on the range, turning 90 degrees and firing 9-irons down the teeing area and toward the third green off in the distance. Once only lauded for his prodigious power, he has worked to add more shots to his repertoire, including soft-armed shots that lower the trajectory and take off some spin. In this case, McIlroy relied on a “three-quarter three-quarter 9-iron” – a shot that, in benign conditions, flies 147 yards. But in these whipping winds, his Trackman confirmed, his ideal carry number was 130.
And so, on 17, just as he practiced, McIlroy drilled the shot through the wind and landed on the back edge of the green, 29 feet away. Safe. Satisfying.
Now, it was Spaun’s turn.
Knowing he was at least a club shorter than McIlroy, Spaun felt confident selecting a chippy 8-iron. There was no way the shot would end up long, not at his higher trajectory. It should have gotten stood up by the wind.
But even now, in the media center a half hour later, Spaun struggled to come up with an explanation. If anything, he said, he was thinking his shot had to go. Maybe the strong, cold wind had briefly laid down. Perhaps he hit it too pure. Whatever the case, he sailed the green altogether – at least 10 yards too long – and plopped into the pond.
Spaun didn’t shy away from the moment, he executed the shot as he wanted – and it still didn’t work out. He sounded like he could live with that.
“I’m happy with the swing,” he said. “It just wasn’t my time, I guess.”
Spaun splashes hole 17 tee shot in Players playoff
Rory McIlroy’s one-stroke lead over J.J. Spaun turned into a massive advantage on 17, with the latter splashing his tee shot past the island green after McIlroy had hit the green.
And if there’s any player who could relate to Spaun’s crushing defeat, it was the one smooching the golden trophy.
McIlroy is the most accomplished player of his generation, and yet he’s still largely viewed through the prism of what he has not done: a major since 2014, a green jacket, another sustained run of dominance. It’s never enough for everyone.
But over the past decade, McIlroy has proven that he is nothing if not resilient, brushing off countless disappointments – even the ones that made him cry and made him embarrassed and made him feel, as they once did with Spaun, like crawling into a hole and dying – only to reemerge for another shot at glory.
“We’ve all had periods where we’ve felt like that. I’ve had to go through it. I’ve had my heart broken a lot,” McIlroy said. “It’s a part of the process. It’s a part of the learning journey. Ultimately, those are the days that make us better.”
And they’re the days that made him a champion, again.
